CAP CANAVERAL, Florida | Despite some technical difficulties, take-off went smoothly on Thursday morning for the Perseverance mobile robot, which began its long journey of nearly seven months to the planet Mars aboard the Atlas V rocket.
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“It’s really fantastic to be gone after all the hard work of this team,” said Bobby Braun, a NASA executive, after the launch.
During its mission, the Perseverance will attempt to find traces of ancient microbes that may have occupied the Red Planet more than three billion years ago.
Quebecer Farah Alibay will be part of the team that will control it remotely, once it arrives on the red planet.
Farah Alibay
Aerospace engineer
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“We are a team of explorers. We discover things on Mars that no one had seen before […] I really hope in my career to have the chance to discover several planets like that, ”she said Thursday in an interview with The newspaper.
lift-off
The Atlas V rocket lifted off Thursday as planned, at 7:50 a.m., from Cape Canaveral in Florida, in a clear sky, for a journey of nearly 480 million kilometers.
However, within hours of launch, the rocket faced technical difficulties and was operating using only its essential functions, NASA said.
“The data indicates that the ship entered a state known as safe mode, possibly because part of the ship was a little cooler than anticipated. [lorsqu’il] was in the shadow of the Earth, ”explained the US space agency, wanting to be reassuring.
Delays in communications between the spacecraft and the control center in California were also noted.
“Everything I’ve seen so far looks correct, and we’ll find out more quickly” when the teams have studied the telemetry data, said Matt Wallace, deputy mission manager.
If it arrives intact on February 18, 2021, Perseverance will be only the fifth crawler to successfully complete the trip since 1997.
A first flight
The rover, or astromobile in French, takes with it a 1.8 kg mini-helicopter called Ingenuity which will attempt the first flight of an aircraft on another planet.
If it manages to take off in the very fine air of Mars, dense as 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere, it would be a first step towards planetary exploration by air, which is of great interest to NASA. since rovers can only travel a few tens of kilometers in their life, and are vulnerable to relief.
More robust
Perseverance was designed to climb obstacles 40 cm high. It has 19 cameras and two microphones, which could be the first to record Martian sound.
Photo AFP
Le robot d’exploration Perseverance
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The rover will take around thirty rock samples in tubes which should be repatriated to Earth during a future American-European mission, no earlier than 2031.
–With Roxane Trudel
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